Mercy Ships Africa Blog

When David Kpakiwa thinks about the surgical need in his home country of Sierra Leone, he gets emotional.  It’s not just because he cares about his countrymen and women.  It’s because for him, this issue hits close to home.  “When I was a kid, my mom got sick and she needed surgery,” he said. “But in our community, they could not provide that.”  David’s mother would have to leave their home in the Kono District to find treatment, but the travel was too expensive. David was young, but he carried a lot of responsibility as a provider for his family. He began supporting his family at the age of 8, working long hours on a farm to bring home money to his mother.  “I spent a lot of time looking at my mom’s suffering,” he said.  Although she was finally able to get the help she needed, David never forgot the experience.  “The memories are there,” he said. “They’re fresh.”  David’s family is not unique among Sierra Leoneans. There are fewer than three surgeons for every 100,000 people in the population, but those surgeons are distributed unequally across the country. That means surgical care is inaccessible to the majority of people. Estimates of the unmet surgical need in Sierra Leone reach as high as 91%.  David’s mother was just one of those people who couldn’t access the care she desperately needed – leaving a lasting impact on those who loved her most. That’s why now, years later, as David prepares the way for the Global Mercy™ to arrive in Freetown, Sierra Leone, he takes his job personally. 

For Catherine Conteh, there’s a moment from the birth of her daughter that still plays over and over in her mind, 30 years later. She had been lying in her hospital bed in Sierra Leone, in labor, writhing in untreated pain, for four days straight. The doctors told her that due to complications with her labor, she needed a Caesarean section surgery – one that 18-year-old Catherine and her husband, Augustine, couldn’t afford. Without payment up front, she would not be given the surgery.

Hamadou was 4 years old when he came to the Africa Mercy® in Senegal. By then, he had learned to cope with the physical limitations of his cleft lip, a gap in his upper lip that impacted his ability to swallow and eat, as well as how his teeth were growing. But the cleft lip continued to hold him back socially, even within his own family. People in Hamadou’s community drink their water from a large pot that they share with other members of their household, as well as any guests. “People would not want to drink from the same water pot as him,” said his mother Hawa. While Hamadou was isolated in some ways, his mother was always by his side providing constant support.